Social Media as a Tool to Look for People with Dementia Who Become Lost: Factors That Matter

Abstract

This research explored how social media were used to look for people with dementia who went lost, and investigated what features of social media usage were associated with the outcomes of finding. Tweets that were disseminated to find missing people with dementia were collected and clustered by cases. Ten cases were selected as sample cases and traced for the outcomes of finding. Information of the Twitter users who tweeted and retweeted were retrieved and categorized. Descriptive analysis was applied to examine the lost cases and features of social media usage; T-test and chi-square analysis were conducted between outcomes of the lost incidents and key features of tweets and Twitter users. Results indicated that there was no significant association between the average number of tweets and retweets and the outcomes of finding, but social media users, especially the ones with a larger group of followers (audience), such as the media, should be encouraged to spread such information. However, a code of conduct is needed to ensure social media are not abused.